Letters to the Editor.

From Leo Coyle, retired school principal, re 2001

Quo Vadis?--2001

The modernists in the secular world and in the Church created a wasteland and called it Renaissance. They were not the truth and they failed. Towards the end of the 20th century, it was not only the coercive utopia of Marx that lay in shambles, so too the empires of the mind built upon the ideas of those other gods of modernity--Freud, Keynes, Kinsey, Picasso and Margaret Mead.

Wandering in the ruins of these empires, men again search for meaning. The wise are returning to traditional beliefs.

Marx, Freud, Keynes, Kinsey, Mead and Picasso--these celebrated pioneers of modernity, where did they go wrong? In some excellent books E. Michael Jones, Derek Freeman, and William A. Donohue among others have come up with the answers. Jones asserts that our world has been shaped by morally corrupt men and women whose ideas were but rationalizations of their own sordid lives (all in the name of Science).

Jones's thesis is that moral behaviour has a strong and determining influence on one's intellectual life. In Jones's own words, "There are ultimately only two alternatives in intellectual life. Either one conforms desire to the truth or one conforms truth to desire." The latter is intellectual dishonesty. Jones argues that the assaults by Freud, Kinsey and Mead on traditional beliefs were rooted in their own degeneracy.

He traces the pattern back: "Rousseau, the writer of Emile, the first modern book on childrearing, sent all of his five illegitimate children to an orphanage shortly after they were born, which, given the condition of the orphanages of the 18th century, meant to their deaths."

"Marx, champion of the proletariat, knew only one proletarian in his life, his maid, Lenchen, to whom he paid not a single penny in wages. In addition to this economic exploitation, there was also sexual exploitation."

Mead claimed to have discovered in the Western Pacific a sexual paradise without the doctrine of original sin. Published in 1927. Coming of Age in Samoa caused a revolution in Western thinking. Her conclusions were totally contradicted by other anthropologists who later visited the islands.

"Now it could be shown," writes Jones, "not only that sexual license led to disease and death but that its papers had been forged as well." Mead's "idyll of casual sex beneath the palm trees was proving to be about as scientific as the screenplay of The Blue Lagoon." Mead falsified her data to justify her own promiscuity, claims Jones.

Kinsey, we now know, was a fraud whose report on the incidence of homosexuality in post-war America was attained by seeding his control group with deviants and convicts. His report on children's sexual responses relied on the testimony of pedophiles. The famous doctor who gathered the world's greatest collection of pornography had falsified the report to justify his own aberrant sexuality.

"Beneath all the high-sounding ideas, one detects the unsavoury odour of hypocrisy and mendacity and beneath that, sexual compulsion masquerading as scientific interest," states Jones. "Science is the legitimator that allows sex educators to engage in smutty talk in front of children without being either fired or arrested."

Freud's Oedipus Complex is a fraud and is very close to the terrible secret of his own life--probably sex abuse by his father, whom he called a pervert--and he (Freud) probably committed incest with his wife's sister. There is powerful evidence that he was into quackery and the occult.

While Keynes's rampant homosexuality was covered up at first, his disbelief in self-denial helped to explain the radically intemperate Keynesian theories of consumption that now afflict the Western democracies.

These six, along with Darwin (with his science fiction), Mill, Rousseau, and Skinner, form the greatest Liars' Club in the history of the world.

Marx's ideas gave us an empire that lies in shambles along with history's greatest holocausts. Keynes gave us an overwhelming debt. Picasso's rebellion in art turns into the bizarre and nihilistic. Freud, Mead, and Kinsey gave us the sexual revolution-with its hedonism, disease, family breakdown, and the collapse of society (abortion, euthanasia-the culture of death).

Gibbons, AR

From Donald DeMarco re Chretien

Some outrage was expressed in the Catholic media, not only over Chretien's gross misrepresentation of Catholic teaching on abortion, but also over the fact that neither the school principal nor the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops called him to task for his indefensible and scandalous statement. Ottawa's Bishop Gervais, however, expressed disappointment in the Prime Minister's remarks: "He was in a Catholic school. One would hope that he could have provided a better answer."

It is most interesting to note here that on October 18, 2000, the New York Torah Court--Beth Din--announced that after careful deliberation, it had excommunicated Senator Joshua Lieberman. In its decision, the Court cited the vice-presidential hopeful's misrepresentation of Jewish teaching about partial-birth abortion.

Waterloo, ON

From David Dooley

At the beginning of the election campaign, and repeatedly during it, Prime Minister Chretien insisted that we have social peace in Canada and that there was no need to bring up the question of abortion: it had already been settled.

Strange peace! At the time he spoke, there were people in Ontario and British Columbia who had been deprived of their civil rights for protesting at abortion clinics; freedom of religion was also in question in B.C., where people had been arrested for saying the rosary, as if that were a form of assault.

In addition, almost every day the newspapers carried stories related to abortion. Presumably the Prime Minister did not know that Canada has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, and that our 115,000 abortions a year are partially responsible. He would not have known that the arguments over reproductive technology have come to the fore, especially with the question of using embryos for research or for the production of "spare parts," such as stem cells. He might possibly have heard that Bill Clinton vetoed legislation banning partial birth abortions, and that George Bush would support it if he became president. Did Chretien have any idea of what Canadians felt about this horrifying procedure?

Oakville, ON

From Urbain Leblanc

On the topic of abortion, true to form, our Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, speaks from both sides of his mouth. And so does Toronto Auxiliary Bishop Anthony Meagher; he, too, has a wet noodle for a backbone and so have some of his Canadian brother bishops. Trudeau, Turner, Mulroney, Clark, Chretien, et al., all have made their contribution in fostering the Culture of Death.

As a Canadian and as a Catholic, I do not for one moment wish to impose my moral code on anyone, nor do I wish to deny any woman the "right" to choose to have an abortion, but by the same token I should not be denied the right to refuse to pay or permit any portion of my tax dollars to pay for any expenses related to therapeutic abortions. As a private citizen, I should not be required to be a party, defacto or otherwise, to an action which destroys outright the life of the most vulnerable and defenceless in our society--the unborn child.

Approximately 115,000 Canadian men and women sacrificed their lives in the defence of our country during World Wars I and II and the Korean War. On November 11th each year we salute these brave men and women as well as those who returned home; and well we should honour them! In one year, 1997, according to reliable statistics, a similar number of innocent, helpless Canadian babies were deliberately denied the "light of day"; that's one premeditated murder every 4.5 minutes of every day; and it merits repeating, I and every other Canadian taxpayer had no choice but to foot the bill. Are not our hands dripping in innocent blood?

Moncton, NB

Editor's comments

I draw the readers' attention to paragraph two where the author states, "I do not for one moment wish to impose my moral code..." My purpose here is not to embarrass Mr. Leblanc, but to point out how easy it is to fall into the trap of ethical pluralism which holds that one opinion is no better than another, and that no one possesses the truth.

Please read or reread the article by Joseph Campbell on Trudeau, November 2000, p.5. The author distinguishes between public and private morality and between religion and morality.

Campbell does so again in the December 2000 issue, Letter to the editor, "Religion no, morality yes."

Please also read my article "Elections: a Catholic postscript," Jan/Feb 2001, pp. 10-11, which hammers on the same idea; namely, that Christ is necessary for the good order of society. Christian teaching is not just a matter of private opinion which we, as Catholics, may or may not decide to defend. Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and there is no other road to salvation.

In other words, the moral code of Catholicism is not a private matter; it is a public matter which society in general should uphold.

From Carmel Gaffiero

Hugh Ballantyne's "Things Catholic count" (CI, Dec 2000) sent my mind back to my childhood in wartime Malta. There, every evening, sitting on hard wooden benches in crowded small rooms, dedicated members of the Society of Christian Doctrine prepared us for our first Holy Communion. We learned how to make the sign of the cross properly, followed by all the simple prayers which we 'chanted' one after the other until we memorized them all ... no books, no pictures, no paintings or crayons, just repeating all prayers and simple 'doctrine'. One God....Two Natures....Three Persons....

Toronto, ON

From Brian Taylor re letter from Stewart Lewis, Jan/Feb 2001

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the vocation of the lay faithful, we read:

898 "By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God's will-It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are closely associated that these may always be effected and grow according to Christ and may be to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer." (Lumen Gentium, 31)

899 The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life. This initiative is a normal element of the life of the Church....

1) Does Mr. Lewis think that Catholics in civil politics are exempt from the vocation of the lay faithful to direct temporal affairs in the political (and other) spheres "according to God's will" so that they may be brought into conformity with "the demands of Christian doctrine and life" and "grow according to Christ," thereby giving glory to God? Does Mr. Stewart want (or not want) God to be glorified in this way? (Hint: The First Great Commandment).

2) Do laity fulfil their mission if they direct temporal affairs according to the will of a politician/lawmaker who jettisons the moral law of God? (Hint: the patron saint of his profession, St. Thomas More, might have something to say on the matter).

3) Would Mr. Stewart publicly oppose any Catholic politician who actively carries out his lay mission "as a normal element of the life of the Church?" (Hint: we know, of course, that the powers of darkness would oppose....).

4) The long-standing saying in the Church that "Where Peter is, there is the Church" bears rehearing. From the teaching of the Catechism, we know where Peter is. Where is Mr. Stewart: where Peter is, or not?

Toronto, ON

From Brian Hubka re Armenian Patriarch (Jan/Feb, 2001, p.21)

The final paragraph is filled with errors. If Armenia became a Christian country in 301, it was a lot more than 'several years' before Rome itself. The first edict of toleration (by the Emperor Galerius) was in 311, but Christians were nowhere near a majority for another several decades-perhaps by the decree of Theodosius in 395.

The present country of Armenia did not fall under the Ottoman Turks in the early years of the 20th century or at any other time. However, many Armenians lived outside the present country, in what is now Turkey, especially in eastern Turkey around Lake Van, and in southern Turkey (Cilicia). It was these who suffered the persecution in 1915.

Calgary, AB

From Konrad Szymanski re Youth Teams

First, I would like to thank you for Catholic Insight. I am a great fan of your magazine. I am writing regarding the article which appeared in the January/ February 2001 issue entitled "Lay Associations," particularly the section dealing with Youth Teams of Our Lady (p.16). We thank Fr. Leonard Kennedy for his warm words. As the national Canadian responsible for the movement of Youth Teams of Our Lady, I would like to clarify some items.

"Is usually made up of high school students."

Internationally, Youth Teams of Our Lady is a movement for university students and young working people. Only in Canada does it also involve high school students, simply because of the age of the group which planted the movement in Canada.

"In Canada in 1999, the retreat was at a scout camp in Ontario, and forty new members were inducted; further information may be obtained from Mrs. Margaret Olszewski, coordinator."

We organize retreats throughout the year for both high school and university students. After a retreat, each person goes back to their family, community and school strengthened in their faith. If some people want to continue to draw strength on their everyday journey by prayer and sharing in a small community, they can join a team. I coordinate the activities of the university students in the Teams, be it retreats, monthly meetings, or trips. We also help organize high school students in their parishes. Mrs. Margaret Olszewski coordinates these activities.

"The heart of the meeting is a selection carefully chosen from a book or periodical. Each person has a copy and takes a turn reading aloud. Everyone then participates in a discussion of what has been said."

Our movement is focused on the Little Way--we help each other strive for holiness in everyday life. Prayer is at the heart of every one of our monthly meetings. We begin by sharing what has happened in the previous month and continue together with prayer. We then go on to a study topic. Over the past year, in order to prepare for the World Youth Day 2000 in Rome, we read and reflected on the Pope's letters to the youth for the preceding World Youth Days.

This year, we are reading and discussing the Catechism of the Catholic Church. At the end of a meeting, each person carries an individual Rule of Life; each person chooses something specific that he or she will work on in his or her life over the next month. We pray for each other during the month in this intention.

I will be more than happy to answer any questions and can be reached at, 3015 Parkerhill Rd., #803, Mississauga, ON., L4B 4B2, Tel: [phone], e-mail [e-mail]

From Marcella Miller re Millstone Awards

Further to Toronto's Sr. Caroline Altpeter's belief that Jesus only founded two of the seven sacraments (C.I., Dec. pp.38-39), no doubt most Catholics are grateful for all seven sacraments and praise and thank God and the Church for these spiritual treasures and hopefully pray for many more Catholic priests to administer them.

Sudbury, ON

From Al Zawadzki

Thanks for your efforts in researching, assembling or writing thought provoking and informative articles. They show more attention to intellectual and philosophical questions and are far better developed than most popular Catholic publications. Keep it up.

Mississauga, ON

From Joe Geenen

Love your magazine. We were disappointed in the election. We out West don't count at all, it seems. Our young farmers are leaving the land because they are unable to make a living. It's very sad. Please find enclosed a cheque for $25.00 in payment for one year's subscription.

Muenster, SK